Elaine Chao’s selection for Transportation secretary is an curious one for those who are interested in the covert aviation scene. Obviously, it is curious for other reasons which are covered here and here. We think they’ve done a good job of raising relevant questions about the pick, so we’ll move on to her relationship to private businesses involved in covert operations including extraordinary rendition.

In 2001, they owned two Cessna Citations with the tail numbers N241LA and N242LA. Both of these aircraft were dispatched by the FAA as “Special Operations Flights” on September 11, 2001 at 6:32 pm after the terrorist hijackings and attacks according to the FAA timeline (on page 197). By early 2004, both Cessnas had been “sold” to Braxton Management Services LLC and were flying for Centurion Aviation Services of Fayetteville, NC, but Hardman was still affiliated with that business while Lambda Aviation eventually stopped submitting their annual reports. This seems like a shell game intended to hide the actual ownership of the aircrafts. But that’s a rabbit trail we will leave for later.

We just thought it was odd that the (probable) new Transportation Secretary and a longtime Kentucky politician were close to businesses such as these. The nexus of policy, profits, pals and patronage might be looming in the background.

Mitch McConnell’s face has been compared to that of a turtle’s. That’s just rude. But hey, turtles live in swamps, right? Maybe even the swamps that have supposedly been drained…

The files show that [Farhad] Azima and Hosseinpour appeared on corporate documents of a company that planned to buy a hotel in the nation of Georgia in 2011. That was the same year treasury officials asserted that Hosseinpour, who co-founded the private airline FlyGeorgia, and two others first began to send millions of dollars into Iran, which led to sanctions being taken against him three years later.

One has to wonder why Cannady was partnering with someone like Tskhadadze. Was he simply going for the big profit? Was he opposed to the sanctions and attempting to express his stance by circumventing them? There have to be less risky ways of pursuing those goals. Or was he a variety of double-agent who wanted to get inside information on the sanctions-busters with whom he dealt? If so, on who’s behalf was he working?

We would hazard a guess here: It’s possible that Georgia Transport Management in the country of Georgia is connected to the one in the state of Georgia. Actually, it has to be since George Cannady is intimately connected to both of them. The company in the U.S. was Atlanta Air Service Inc from 2002 until 2006 when it became Atlanta Air Service LLC and became Georgia Transport Management LLC in 2015. Cannady was the owner of AAS where he partnered with Ronnie B. Powers. And now we are connecting back into previousstories which shed some light on their covert activities. To restate our question: For whom has George Guyton Cannady been working?

In an earlier post, we reported on DoD contracts in Bridgewater, Virginia (population about 6000) which showed the small rural town might be involved in airborne systems necessary to the well-known drone strikes of the last decade. In April 2015, Jeremy Scahill wrote in The Intercept, an online publication focused on the Edward Snowden leaks, about a leaked “U.S. intelligence document... [which] confirms that the sprawling U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany serves as the high-tech heart of America’s drone program.” The document itself is linked here.

Relevant to the contractor Dynamic Aviation in Bridgewater is the image of the Beechcraft C-12 Huron (the military designation of the King Air 200) Guardrail labelled “MARSS SIGINT/FMV” on the second page. This aircraft was used for the U.S. Army’s Aerial Common Sensor, but this program was terminated in 2006.

So if the C-12 Huron Guardrail (ACS) program was terminated, how is it related to MARSS and why is it showing up in this document from July 2012? In a word: Outsourcing. Here’s an article on that trend as it relates to MARSS. Dynamic Aviation is one of the aviation companies who has benefitted from military programs being “terminated” and then contracted out in the name of cost-cutting and efficiency. It also doesn’t hurt that the drone assassination program itself is diffused in multiple layers of government intelligence agencies, DoD departments, primary contractors and subsequent subcontractors. Getting a handle on that spider’s web is a challenge, but we try to do what we can.

An article on the Army’s website sheds some light on EMARSS (Enhanced MARSS). Search down in the page to find the reference, but first notice the photo of the Dash-8 in the slideshow at the top. That’s a Dynamic Aviation aircraft (tail number N8100V).

Next up: Shedding some light on the other C-12 labelled “LIBERTY SIGINT” and it’s connection to a disappeared L-3 Communications executive. Things get spookier.

Roraima CEO and chairman of Guyana’s Private Sector Commission Gerry Gouveia distances the new partnership from the “defunct and controversial EZjet airlines,” but Gouveia himself has an interesting past. According to a Wikileaks cable, he had alleged ties to criminals which either caused his US visa to be revoked or made him ineligible to get one—the same fate of “Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee and Commissioner of Police Henry Greene (who are known associates and accomplices of drug traffickers and human smugglers)” according to the cable.

Numerous defense contract listings on a Department of Defense website show the importance of small private military companies in the U.S. drone wars. While “drone wars” is the popular reference for what is taking place in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, it is really a misnomer. Missiles fired by fighter jets and battleships are also part of the weaponry used, and other manned aircraft are used in collecting information on high-value targets.

One of the co-conspirators in the USAF contracting fraud case that was mentioned in an earlier post was Ronald B. Powers, also known as “Ronnie.” Ronnie has an interesting past. You could say that he’s been very lucky. For one in 2005 he found himself in possession of Frank Sinatra’s Lear jet and apparently sold it to an “anonymous” owner. This is supposedly the jet that Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu used when they eloped. And we won’t mention the statements from Sinatra’s daughter that her dad was CIA-connected…

Sonny Ramdeo, the founder and former CEO of the defunct Guyanese airilne EZ Jet, has admitted guilt to charges including embezzling between $20 and $50 million. The funds were taken from Promise Healthcare/Success Healthcare in Ramdeo’s role as payroll manager for those companies. They were then used to financially support his EZ Jet airline which failed in late 2012.

In our previous post, we highlighted the indictment of three U.S. Air Force contractors for contracting fraud among other charges. One of them, George Cannady, had been employed by North Carolina-based Dynamic Airways. John Norman Sims was the man inside the Pentagon who directed contracts to Cannady and his co-conspirator Ronald B. Powers.

Sims shows up in three entries on the government’s Excluded Parties List System (pdf) which tracks “those parties excluded from receiving Federal contracts, certain subcontracts, and certain types of Federal financial and non-financial assistance and benefits.” His most recent venture in government contracting was with Enkidu7 (whose website has reverted back to a generic template but here’s something about them) where he was the CEO according to a book blurb (image). Sims is in some way connected to another company called Cyber Dorylus, LLC. By looking up the internet domain name, the information below was found:

Another connection goes up to the Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. In April 2013, he announced the creation of a “Cyber Security Accelerator” which included Enkidu7 as one of the contributing organizations. It’s listed along with In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s technology incubator, and SAIC which has been mentioned here in previous posts.

So what is the relationship between Enkidu7 and the Fairfax, Virginia address of William Jasien’s business? And what is the intention of naming your internet company after army ants?

George Guyton Cannady of North Carolina has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice along with two other U.S. Air Force contractors for 34 counts including “conspiracy, bribery, theft of government funds, disclosing or obtaining contractor bid and proposal information, honest services mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy, and making false statements.” In 2010 after selling Prescott Support Company (an air cargo company contracted by the U.S. Government to fly “extraordinary renditions” – see here and here) and Atlanta Air Services, Cannady was hired by Dynamic Aviation as the Vice President of Operations for their Dynamic Airways subsidiary. A few months later, he was promoted to Chief Operating Officer. In late 2011, Cannady left employment at Dynamic Airways.

Two other contractors were also indicted – John Norman Sims and Ronald Benton Powers. Powers was an associate of Cannady at Atlanta Air Services. Sims was the “inside man” at the Pentagon who allegedly took bribes from Cannady and Powers “so that he would continue to steer valuable USAF contracts to [their] companies.”